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Viola Desmond is now considered a forerunner in the civil rights movement in Canada. Lesser known is her role as a groundbreaking and successful African Nova Scotian entrepreneur. In this paper, the author pursues two objectives: (1) elevate the entrepreneurial accomplishments and lessons of Viola Desmond, and (2) explore a unique feminist approach to critical historiography, which fuses prowoman polemical writing, with fictocritical strategies and autoethnography. The research question guiding this study is: How can the application of a novel feminist approach help reveal an overlooked historical female figure who has been marginalized by a web of interlocking discourses? The paper makes three related contributions: (1) achieving recognition for Viola Desmond as an overlooked contributor to our understanding of female leadership in black entrepreneur; (2) promoting an understanding of her lost lessons and accomplishments; and (3) providing a plausible explanation for why Viola Desmond was omitted from the conceptualization of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper explores women's entrepreneurship policy and practice in three different countries: Canada, Ireland and the U.S. We focus specifically on policies relating to access to financial capital, and ask: How are 'access to financial capital' policies and practices operationalized at national and regional level? We draw on institutional theory to identify gaps in policy and practice, and to highlight similarities and differences between countries. We contribute a novel perspective on women's entrepreneurship policy by drawing attention to the underlying institutional pillars and the importance of institutional fit in informing a coherent and future-looking policy framework. Our findings enhance understanding of how 'access to financial capital' policies and practices geared toward women entrepreneurs reflect different institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the motives and factors that drive entrepreneurship in Syrian refugee women in Canada and the differential contexts that may support or hinder these activities. Using a qualitative research design, a total of 29 in-depth interviews were conducted with Syrian refugee women, who had been in Canada for a minimum of 1 year and with key informants, including employment counselors and program managers who work closely with refugees during their resettlement. A feminist grounded analysis led to the identification of systemic challenges to entrepreneurship. Particularly, findings illustrate how the women were primarily interested in starting a small business in feminized industries such as food/catering or tailoring. However, these activities were challenged by economic, regulatory, and gendered contexts that appeared to push the women to operate these businesses in unregulated bounds, which was not financially rewarding. Key informants, on the other hand, seemed to promote feminized entrepreneurship as a "social enterprise" irrespective of the women's background and experience. The paper presents new empirical evidence of entrepreneurship at the intersections of refugee and gender in Canada and adds to the growing body of work that examines migrant contexts that impact economic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the positioning of gender within women-focused capital funds (WFCFs) to consider the extent to which these digitally enabled sources of finance reflect the tenets of entrepreneurial feminism. Content analysis of 27 funds situated in Canada and the USA informs about fund mandates, rationales, types of capital, and anticipated outcomes. Our findings reveal that a minority of WFCFs examined sought to enhance equity and counter structural barriers associated with women entrepreneurs' access to financial capital. Alternatively, the majority of WFCFs were positioned as vehicles to facilitate individual wealth creation. Eligibility ranged from multiple gender identities of the business owner to "women-led" businesses—defined as at least one woman executive, board or steering committee member. The latter of these criteria has the effect of diverting attention away from firms that are launched by women entrepreneurs. Pinkwashing was more likely to occur when WFCFs were created as add-ons to mainstream programs and services, rather than as a central element of the organization's mission of supporting women and non-binary femmes. The findings support arguments that technology can both challenge or reinforce structural constraints that impede women entrepreneurs in the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose The purpose of this paper was to provide a plausible answer to how there are so few science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-professional women managers in the Canadian space industry.Design/methodology/approach The author showcased one such individual and her experiences of the exclusionary order in this industry, by focusing on her discourses and those of her former supervisor. The author applied the critical sensemaking (CSM) framework to unstructured interview data and to various collected written documentation. To guide the author’s application of this CSM framework, the author asked and answered the following questions: what is the range of identity anchor points associated with, and available to, a STEM-professional woman within the Canadian space industry? What is the relationship between these anchor points and organizational rules and social values? And, how do these anchor points and their relationship with rules and social values influence the exclusion of STEM-professional women from management positions within this industry?Findings The author surfaced a STEM-professional woman’s range of ephemeral identities, captured within her range of attributed anchor points. The author also revealed some of the rules and social values of the organizational context she worked in. The author then analyzed the how of her exclusionary social order, by studying the relationship between these anchor points and these rules and social values.Social implications In addition to addressing the lack of STEM-professional women in management and to filling a gap in the literature, this study made a contribution to our understanding of social-identities, represented by anchor points, and to their discursive reproduction within organizational contexts. The author also suggested micro-political resistances to undo this social order for one particular individual.Originality/value This study’s value can be measured by its contribution to the postpositivist cisgender and diversity literature focused on intersectionality scholarship, specifically in the area of identity anchor points and their (re)creation within social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The increasing complexity of Canadian businesses in a changing marketplace indicates that women as well as men managers will have to be well trained to be able to position themselves in this new environment with a certain degree of success and personal happiness. As management educators, we have to accept an important share in this responsibility. This paper examines some of the factors that should be considered by those who want to develop management training programs for the future women managers or entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about personal reflections of an immigrant, Muslim, Pakistani, middle class, minority woman working in a business school in Canada who receives an invitation to a White dinner. She writes of experiencing emotional labor and esthetic labor; tensions based on gender, religion, class, age, and culture; skepticism against belonging and otherness—and the space in between; along with her consciousness of being under the disciplinary gaze of her own community members. She feels suspended between strength and vulnerability, resorting to reflective writing for sense‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The authors conduct an empirical investigation of the national Equity X Program to understand not just the barriers that women face in becoming producers and developing business skills to move their career forward as artist entrepreneurs in Canada but also how emerging professionals feel about their perceived opportunities. The authors first situate the study within the literature on equity and inclusion in the creative sector and the importance of the music industry in this context. They then use an impact assessment framework that incorporates key indicators around equity and inclusion, aesthetic goals and approaches, and accessibility measures to help organize six rich clusters of data drawn from respondents (N=397). Using iterative open coding of open-ended responses to semi-structured questions, as well as critical discourse analysis, the authors examine the clustered data to illustrate or address these impact measures and to tease out the implications of each cluster of data. The analysis of the six clusters of data can help the sector (and their funders and policymaking supporters) better understand priorities for entrepreneurial capacity-building, including professionalization, technical skills, self-development, a sense of belonging through networking, entrepreneurial development, and emotional engagement in the sector. While the study does not suggest that systemic discrimination can be overcome any time soon, it does provide evidence of the ways in which women creatives in music believe that becoming more proficient in technical and business skills will help them; it also illustrates their optimism about being able to overcome discrimination. This generates a more complex understanding not just of some of the challenges faced by diverse women artist-entrepreneurs within Canada's music ecosystem but also perceptions about how they aim to overcome these challenges. The article concludes by outlining future work required to ameliorate system-wide discrimination in arts entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how feminist restaurant and café owners in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Canada challenged management hierarchies, serving practices, and typical restaurant structure. Despite facing a political and economic system that was hostile to women's business ownership (particularly for women of colour and lesbians), the owners of feminist restaurants and cafés, crafted creative solutions to create the kinds of spaces they wanted. The owners founded these establishments even if it meant having to bend the laws, such as skirting health codes or manipulating tax statuses to their own advantage. While feminist restaurants and cafés challenged capitalism, they still had to be part of the economy. Bolstered by the oral history and archival analysis, this article re-centres feminist entrepreneurialism and challenges narratives of post-war feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosive growth in the rate of new business formation by women has spurred renewed research interest in the area of female entrepreneurship and its related economic impact. Yet, there has been a dearth of research into the influence of gender on new venture formation and development. This study draws on data from the annual survey of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor to examine the differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the early stages of small enterprise development. The data was aggregated for the period 2002 through 2004, and consisted of 444 Canadian entrepreneurs: 164 females and 280 males. Gender differences are explored within the context of a variety of personal as well as business-related variables. Women entrepreneurs had a much greater propensity to have established a consumer or business services enterprise, and reported significantly lower income levels. In addition, they were less likely than their male counterparts to work full time at their business, to utilize new technology or to anticipate new business opportunities in the near term. In terms of the enterprise's stage of development, it was found that 62 percent of the enterprises operated by females were ‘nascent’ small firms, while 38 percent were ‘new;’ the respective proportions for males were 55 percent and 45 percent. The analysis revealed that the difference between genders on business-related variables strengthens as the firm evolves through the stages of development from nascent to new; however, there was mixed support for the corollary hypothesis that differences in personal characteristics and attitudes diminish during this progression: even for ventures that have reached the ‘new’ phase, personal variables continue to act as important discriminators between genders. The paper provides a discussion of the implications of these empirical findings, as well as some directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses women's occupational careers as managers and entrepreneurs in France and Canada. The world of business management has long been the domain of men. With increasing numbers of women embarking on careers in management, we are witnessing an important change in the sexual division of labor in postindustrial societies. To understand the transformations taking place in the organization of work, we need to turn our attention to the careers of managerial women. The concept of the occupational career has, for the most part, been conceived in the context of the male experience. A career involves a sequence of jobs leading to upward mobility and greater power, privilege, and prestige. It implies involvement in, and commitment to, the occupation.

In addition to covering many of the key issues shaping women's experiences of work, it explores a number of topics that might not usually be included in a book about work. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents a discussion on the role of women in international management, primarily in regards to the disproportionate amount of male executives to female executives. The author believes that in order for corporations to achieve success in the global marketplace, firms cannot continue to rely primarily on men. This article provides a map of the distribution of female international managers for U.S. and Canadian corporations and indicates the types of enterprises which have and have not commissioned women for work abroad.

Existing studies have been inconclusive on whether and the extent to which gendered social networks contribute to the gender gap in business performance. Drawing on a random sample of Chinese Canadian entrepreneurs, this research examines the nexus of social networks, Internet use, and the gender gap in business performance. Results reveal a marked gender difference in firm size, which becomes narrowed after social networks, voluntary association participation, Internet use, and business characteristics are controlled. More important, network composition and structural position have different implications for men and women entrepreneurs. Men are more effective in converting relational advantages into business advantages. Interaction effects suggest that kin homophily hurts women’s business performance but not men’s. Yet, women gain more from participating in transnational entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study assesses the influence of entrepreneurial experience, business experience, size, and engagement in research and technology as predictors of export activity for women business owners in Atlantic Canada. Exporters are an economic driver of the Canadian economy and exporting can be an important strategic means of developing markets beyond Canada's relatively small domestic market. The findings of this study confirmed that experience and research engagement were statistically significant discriminators between exporting and non-exporting firms. In contrast, engagement in technology adoption, technology investment, and using technology to improve efficiency and productivity were not significant predicting factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article expands understanding of gender and advancement in academic science by going into a new dimension of inquiry: Focusing on women associate professors in computing, it assesses the relationship between perceived chances for promotion to full professor and indicators of entrepreneurship, as part of key sets of individual and departmental independent variables that are also addressed. Data from a national survey of women in academic computing indicate that time spent in entrepreneurial activity does not predict excellent/good (compared to fair/poor) chances for promotion perceived by these women faculty, nor does the quantity/quality of entrepreneurial activity that they report for their home units. Departmental reward structures reported as favoring entrepreneurial activity negatively predict perceived chances for promotion. Other key individual and departmental characteristics also predict chances for promotion: faculty members' age, collaboration, family characteristics, departmental climate, and US (compared to Canadian) location. Findings from interviews with a small subset of respondents to the survey illuminate the survey findings on the role of entrepreneurial factors in perceived chances for advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the perceived barriers to career advancement specific to women in the advanced technology sectors. Strategies employed in response to perceived barriers are also examined. Empirical results are based on analysis of qualitative data from a sample of 115 women members of Canadian Women in Technology. Personal-, firm- and industry-level barriers to career advancement were documented. The respondents attributed a high proportion of the challenges they encountered to gender. Respondents were most likely to resolve challenges through personal, or ‘do-it-yourself’, solutions. Few cited firm- or industry-related support structures. While mentoring was identified as a frequently used response strategy through which women address career challenges, the majority of firms in the advanced technology sector lack sufficient numbers of suitable women mentors. The lack of mentorship opportunities is particularly acute for women entrepreneurs. The findings are discussed from the context of contradictions between an industry need to attract and retain entrepreneurial talent and respondents’ perceived career barriers. Industry-level remedial strategies are advanced in the form of: a women's mentoring programme; case studies about successful women entrepreneurs and a website to inform women about career advancement strategies. The programmes were designed by the research team to respond to the challenges cited by women and were implemented in cooperation with the trade association as a critical component of an on-going applied research programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on theories about the internationalization process of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and feminist arguments to explain gender differences in export propensity. Findings are based on a large-scale survey of Canadian SMEs. After controlling for sector, firm, and owner attributes, female majority-owned firms were significantly less likely to export than firms owned by men. The implications for entrepreneurship and feminist theory, export policy, and research are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article previews the September, 2006 issue of "Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice." The issue focuses on the topic of women's entrepreneurship, noting that thirty percent of all privately held firms in the U.S. are principally owned by women, controlling $1.2 trillion in revenue. The trend of women's entrepreneurship is even greater internationally, especially in countries such as Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand. The issue focuses on social perceptions of women entrepreneurs, building the female entrepreneurship community, and a discussion of research related to women-owned businesses.

This work examines gender differences among Canadian small and medium enterprise (SME) owners seeking external financing, including commercial debt, leasing, supplier financing, and equity capital after controlling for size and industry sector. The work also examines potential gender differences in owners' strategic choices (application rates) and financiers' evaluative responses (turndown rates). Contrary to previous work that did not control for size and sector of firm, women business owners were equally likely as men to seek all types of external financing, except for external equity capital. Business in which women held majority ownership were significantly less likely to seek equity capital even after controlling for systemic factors. Male and female business owners that do apply for financing were equally likely to obtain capital. When asked the reasons for not seeking financing, the majority of respondents, male and female, specified that financing was not needed. Recommendations about future research are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the Quebec city area, 400 women owner-managers of business in the three industrial sectors answered a detailed questionnaire, and 75 of these subsequently underwent in-depth interviews. The main dimensions explored were the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their firms, the experience of starting a business, the success criteria used, and their vision for the future of their firms. The results suggest the importance, to these women, of a model of "small and stable business". This is not a transitory phase for their firm: most choose and value such a scale of business, and they seek recognition for what they do. This model seems to represent an innovative adaptation to their professional, social, family and personal demands and challenges our definitions of entrepreneurship and of "serious business". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]